Not much to report

Not a lot going on. I believe I'm 8 weeks 1 day now. I'll get measurements and a set due date (well as far as the doctor's concerned, figure the kid will be here in March sometime hopefully) on August 8th.

I don't have much going on until Thursday, and that's just a blood draw. We're reducing my progesterone I'm taking, so my OB is checking my progesterone levels to make sure it stays high enough. I am off the shots and can sit in my dining room chairs now!!! Yay!!!!! Otherwise it's just going through the motions and praying the little one is hanging on and growing, and counting down the days until the 8th. :)

Sheri

First OB visit

I didn't expect it to take 2 hours, but it did. I'm VERY happy with my OB and the office. I've been going there for years, and with what I learned today about how they handle pregnancy, I'm even more pleased. I learned that my OB is one out of 40 doctors chosen to be an officer on the board for the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, out of all the OBs in the US. He also has a computer program that lets him access the hospital, so that when we go in for labor, he can watch from home/office and if something doesn't look right with a contraction or anything, he can basically message the nurse at the hospital and make sure they have checked on me. All OBs in Lincoln have this capability, mine is the only one to use it. I was also told today that when they refer to the end of the first trimester being a safer zone, they are talking about the heart beat. Since ultrasounds are done sooner now, once the heart beat is seen/heard, I should be in the clear. So I don't have to wait until the end of the first tri to breathe that relief. My due date, to her calculations (I saw the PA today actually) is March 17th, but when I go back in 2 weeks for an ultrasound, we'll get the actual due date. So I'm just calling it March. The u/s in 2 weeks will give much better measurements, they can check out everything else in there, too, and we'll be able to see arm buds, leg buds, and movement. It's set up for August 8th. They will also determine then if my cervix is long enough that they don't think I'll need a stitch (helps in cases of a weak cervix) or if they think I do. If so, then they'll do that in early October, instead of waiting for something to happen. In November we'll have the "tell all" u/s, and get a 20 minute dvd, too. :) I also learned that if we do an amnio much later on, they will send me to UNMC for that. They prefer to send patients to a doctor who does 20 a day than in their office where they don't do them often. In the 3 years they have been sending to them, they've had no miscarriages result from it. But that is all a decision for another time.

One last thing. I was told that, especially for all of their infertility patients, once we're past week 10, we can go in once a week, at no charge, to have them find the heart beat for me as a reassurance. I like that thought. They're used to us being scared. :)

Oh and I had lots of blood drawn. I call tomorrow to see about my progesterone, to see if we need to adjust my hormone weaning schedule further.

Alright. Those are the highlights. Probably more than you wanted to read, but hey, maybe you learned something. :)

Sheri

Pictures!

Thank you, Angela, for getting these fixed up for me!!! You rock!

These are from July 23rd, when we got to hear our baby's heart beat for the first time. The bigger circle in the middle is NOT the head, like I thought, but the sac. The baby is the oblong part right below that. This was at 7w1d. And yes, there is only one.




Sheri

Welcome!

If you're reading this, then you know that we're pregnant. :) This is Baby Z's blog. Don't really want to call embie "bean" because that's my parents' dog, and don't want to call him/her "peanut" because that was my hamster. I'm not carrying either one of those. :) Plus, we had to be a little different, and Baby Z is cute. :) I've done a bit of writing in here before now to have a record of it, and if you're curious, head down to the bottom and start from there. There aren't too many posts yet. I'll try to keep it pretty updated. :)

Sheri

And we have a heart beat!

I bawled. I totally bawled when I heard that heart beating. 127 beats per minute. I asked the RE if that was good, and she did a happy dance. Totally reminded me of the Snoopy dance. :) Measured right on for 7w1d. So due date is March 8, 2008. I even graduated from the clinic today, and my OB wants to see me on Thursday. I get to start weaning off of my hormones. Best part of that is, only 4 more shots!! Thank goodness. Just call me Lumpy Butt! Okay don't. :)

We are so relieved. I feel I can say that I'm pregnant now. RE said my chance of miscarriage went down to below 5% today. Wow. Now I can start being happier, more excited, and let my guard down a bit. Not a lot, but a bit. :)

I have a couple more pics, I'll get them up soon. Immediate family have all been called tonight. I'm just way too tired to send out emails and stuff tonight. I'll have more energy tomorrow night and be home earlier (we went to Misty's with my parents to tell them). And I'm not getting up at 5:30am tomorrow, plus I'll sleep better tonight! I may be there in half an hour.

Sheri

Poem

I've seen this post before, and someone posted it on the pregnancy after infertility board. I love it.



Thoughts on Becoming a Mother

There are women that become mothers without effort, without thought, without patience or loss and though they are good mothers and love their children, I know that I will be better.

I will be better not because of genetics, or money or that I have read more books but because I have struggled and toiled for this child. I have longed and waited. I have cried and prayed. I have endured and planned over and over again.

Like most things in life, the people who truly have appreciation are those who have struggled to attain their dreams. I will notice everything about my child. I will take time to watch my child sleep, explore and discover. I will marvel at this miracle every day for the rest of my life.

I will be happy when I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of my child, knowing that I can comfort, hold and feed him and that I am not waking to take another temperature, pop another pill, take another shot or cry tears of a broken dream. My dream will be crying for me.

I count myself lucky in this sense; that God has given me this insight, this special vision with which I will look upon my child that my friends will not see.

Whether I parent a child I actually give birth to or a child that God leads me to, I will not be careless with my love.

I will be a better mother for all that I have endured. I am a better wife, a better aunt, a better daughter, neighbor, friend and sister because I have known pain.

I know disillusionment as I have been betrayed by my own body. I have been tried by fire and hell many never face, yet given time, I stood tall.

I have prevailed. I have succeeded. I have won.

So now, when others hurt around me, I do not run from their pain in order to save myself discomfort. I see it, mourn it, and join them in theirs.

I listen.

And even though I cannot make it better, I can make it less lonely. I have learned the immense power of another hand holding tight to mine, of other eyes that moisten as they learn to accept the harsh truth and when life is beyond hard. I have learned a compassion that only comes with walking in those shoes.

I have learned to appreciate life.

Yes I will be a wonderful mother.

Pictures

These are the first two pics I have of Baby Z. The first one is the picture of both embies before they were transferred back to me, in the blastocyst stage. The second, which is harder to see due to the small picture I got, is from when we went and saw the sac, nice and in my uterus.

Tired. :)

I've started getting more tired lately. Good. I've been nauseas the past few days. Good. And BTW, heat is bad for me when it comes to that. :) I like having the symptoms. It gives me hope. I'm scared to death of Monday. I'm hopeful and excited, but I'm also scared to death. I'm afraid that my little one didn't make it. I thought I was nervous and analyzing everything after transfer. This is worse. Knowing I'm pg but that it could end at any moment and I have no idea... it needs to be Monday.

And it begins...

Well, actually, it began a few weeks ago, but I didn't have the courage to write it down until now. And I won't have the courage to give anyone the link to this until after the 23rd, if all goes well. :)

If you're now reading this, you know I'm pregnant. :) Wow that still seems strange to type. But after 5 long, hard years, it's finally happened, and I'll be 6 weeks tomorrow. Last time I was pg, I didn't even make it to week 5, and ended up with a miscarriage. That keeps my fear high, so I'm very cautious. But after all we've been through to get here, I'd be crazy if I wasn't.

So here's what happened. We decided around the beginning of the year to do our FET in June. Tony was out of class for 5 weeks, thanks to our tax refund and what we'd saved we had the funds, and it just felt right. I started my birth control pills in March. In June I did all my hormones (lupron, baby aspirin, estrogen patches, pills, progesterone troches, progesterone suppositories which have been switched to a shot in the butt every night, all of which I'm still on, except the lupron). My dad was very sick and in the hospital for about 3 weeks of this. It's amazing that my body did so well, actually. On June 22nd, I had my FET transfer. We were scared to death that the 2 embies we had frozen wouldn't make it through the thaw, but they did, and the RE even told me they look good, my lining looked good, and she thought we had a good chance. Had a weekend of pseudo bed rest (more bed rest than not), and went on with life. Had my first blood draw on July 2nd, and my hcg was 151. Nurse told me it was perfect. That night, I spotted blood. Called the emergency line, and my RE said it wasn't good. I switched from the suppositories to the PIO (progesterone in oil) shot that night. I had to wait until the 5th for my 2nd draw, due to the holiday, and was nervous. That's where everything went wrong last time. This draw was 366. It wasn't quite as high as they were looking for (it's to double ever 48 hours per them, 48-72 per other docs, so with other docs they may have stopped there). So I was to go back 4 days later for another draw. It should have been over 1000 by then. But on July 9th, it was only 597. My RE called, and told me he wasn't very optimistic. So to go back on the 11th for another draw. Tony and I figured it was another miscarriage. All signs pointed to it. Well, my RE called on the 11th and told me it actually doubled, up to 1188. He said he had guarded optimism, and I was to go in for an ultrasound. They feared (as did I) that it was an ectopic pregnancy, that the embie was in one of my tubes instead of my uterus. After some confusion (the one nurse there I'm not fond of kinda messed things up, but oh well), I ended up back there on Friday the 13th. The RE looked, and thank God, embie was right there, in my uterus. :) We got to see the sac, and once I figure out the scanner at work, that picture, along with the pic of embie before he/she was in me, will be up here. She said she felt 100% better and we made her day! We went and got me a different progesterone shot (hopefully not to give me as much pain and welts), and came back to work and school. Now we wait until the 23rd to go in and pray that we see the heartbeat.

I'm feeling much better after seeing the sac, but we're not telling yet. I really need to see the heartbeat, to know that we at least got that far, before spilling the beans. So hopefully, hopefully we will see that. We have much more reason to be optimistic now, but after all we've been through, I'll be a little guarded the entire time. No way we could go through all of that and not be. Hopefully, soon, embie will become Baby Z and we can announce it to the world. Well, those that care, at least. :)

Sheri